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Huawei Marine to build Cameroon-Brazil transatlantic cable

Huawei Marine has won a contract to build the Cameroon-Brazil Cable System (CBCS), connecting Africa to Latin America. Cameroon government owned operator CamTel and China Unicom have invested in the project, while Telefónica will support the initiative by providing its international facilities and experience.

The CBCS, which is approximately 6,000km long, will cross the south Atlantic sea connecting Kribi in Cameroon to Fortaleza in Brazil. Using Huawei Marine’s 100G technology, it will have an initial system capacity of 32Tbps with four fibre pairs and come into service at the end of 2017.

The deal was formally approved by David Nkoto Emane, General Manager of CamTel, Lu Yimin, President of China Unicom, along with representatives from Telefónica and Huawei Marine gathered, in Yuande, Cameroon last month.

General Manager of CamTel, David Nkoto Emane commented: “At present, when international data from mainland Africa transmits to America it is forced to divert to Western Europe first before going to America. However, the CBCS will provide a direct route from Africa to America, as well as provide Cameroon, Brazil and other neighbouring countries with a high capacity, reliable and fast transmission channel.”

Explaining his company’s involvement in the project, the president of China Unicom, Lu Yimin, said: “Africa and Latin America are strategic emerging regions for our global business. China Unicom is very pleased to partner with CamTel, Telefónica and Huawei Marine to build this high-speed and low-latency infrastructure to connect Africa and Latin America. Not only will it help meet the increasing demand for local internet access, it will also improve our service to Chinese enterprises which have entered into the African and Latin American markets.”

Telefónica “Telefónica as the leading digital telco in Latin America brings into the project its existing national and international facilities, years of local experience and future commitment. The CBCS will offer a new reliable route in the South Atlantic enabling us to provide a better secure service to our customers”, said Juan Revilla, CEO Wholesale Business Unit in Telefónica Business Solutions

As part of the contract, Huawei Marine will deploy its submarine repeater, the RPT 1660, with a titanium-based slim-line profile that allows direct lay and plough burial. This simultaneous operation significantly reduces system installation costs by eliminating the need for an expensive secondary, post-lay burial operation.

“Having delivered more than 20 submarine cable projects in the past six years, our experience demonstrates we have the capability and confidence to meet our customer’s requirements in both system design and delivery,” said Mike Constable, CEO of Huawei Marine.

BT has made an offer to the UK government to voluntarily provide high-speed broadband to 99 per cent all homes and businesses across the country within five years, which would largely be delivered by Openreach.

The government said it received the offer after it committed to introduce a Universal Service Obligation (USO) through regulation to give every home and business in the UK the right to request a high-speed connection of at least 10Mb/s.